SIGGRAPH Pioneers Chair Ed Kramer interviews VFX Legend Douglas Trumbull – after teaching CGI to a world-wide audience at 2020 World Science Fiction convention
Summer 2020 has been a busy one for Ed Kramer from his desk in Denver, Colorado!
In spite of the Covid-19 pandemic, Ed Kramer has had a busy Summer 2020 – contributing significantly to both the virtual World Science Fiction convention from New Zealand and the virtual SIGGRAPH Conference, originally slated to be held in Washington DC.
Much to his disappointment, Kramer couldn’t travel to New Zealand for CoNZealand, site of 2020’s World Science Fiction convention, where the Hugo Award ceremony takes place each year. This year’s Hugo Awards Master of Ceremonies was Game of Thrones author George R. R. Martin, who presented the 2020 awards virtually.
From his desk in Denver, Kramer was able to participate in two CoNZealand venues: he appeared on a panel about the History of Visual Effects, then followed that up with a virtual Master Class in Maya, introducing attendees to CGI techniques using the industry-standard modeling and animating software from Autodesk, and the Arnold renderer from Solid Angle.
Kramer, who worked as a Senior Technical Director and Sequence Supervisor at George Lucas’s company Industrial Light + Magic from 1994 through 2006, moderated the event. He appeared with current ILM Layout Supervisor Greg Bossert, and both Wayne Stables and Norman Cates from Weta Digital. Panelists talked and reminisced about CGI history through the lenses of both ILM and Weta Digital.
Kramer covered the 1990’s at ILM, when he supervised the scarab beetle shots from The Mummy and creation of the Rock Monster from Galaxy Quest. Bossert, who was Layout Supervisor for Captain Marvel, Bumblebee and Ready Player One, covered the recent history of ILM. Stables, Visual Effects Supervisor on the entire Avatar franchise, also supervised The BFG and The Adventures of Tintin, among many others. Cates, whose career started doing practical VFX, was Lead Compositor on The Avengers and Planet of the Apes, and also served as co-Chair of the entire CoNZealand conference.
Kramer also conducted an introduction to Maya, introducing attendees to various tools for modeling, rigging, animating, lighting and texturing CGI, also touching on dynamic simulation, particle effects, paint FX, and other tools available in the Maya toolchest.
Concurrent with virtually attending CoNZealand, Kramer was also leading the SIGGRAPH Pioneers to create a virtual Reception, and was incredibly honored to bring VFX legend Douglas Trumbull to this year’s SIGGRAPH Conference.
Trumbull created a video specifically for the SIGGRAPH Pioneers, documenting his personal history on projects like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Blade Runner, Brainstorm, and Star Trek: The Motion Picture. He also talked about his work with high frame rate, high definition stereo imagery, and his role in creating the new entertainment medium of ride films, having pioneered that industry with Back to the Future: The Ride for Universal Studios in 1991. His video, titled “The Past, Present and Future of Cinema” can be found here:
Kramer also conducted a live Question and Answer session with Trumbull, where he opened up with personal stories and answered a number of questions posed by the audience of SIGGRAPH Pioneers. That video is available on the SIGGRAPH YouTube channel here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dDY_X0jhmE
For the Pioneers Reception, Kramer also created an “In Memoriam” video as a tribute to the pioneers of the CGI industry who passed away this year. That video is available at this vimeo link: